Marin's Mellow Coastal Towns

MARIN County was either named for a Miwok Indian chief or for the illegitimate son of a shipwrecked Spanish marino. Or it could have been named after a seaworthy Indian who floated across San Francisco Bay a few hundred years ago like Moses, clutching a bundle of bulrushes. The confusion is characteristic of a place where antecedents don't much matter and even last names seem vestigial.

Although Sir Francis Drake landed on the Marin peninsula in 1579, most settlers arrived within the past 50 years, after the Golden Gate Bridge hooked Marin to San Francisco, which may account for the county's legendary informality. In fact, the 60's slogan "Be here now" could well serve as the local motto, which makes rather poignant sense when you consider that west Marin rests snugly atop the San Andreas fault.

Yet despite occasional tremors, coastal west Marin embodies California at its most persistently relaxed. Within an hour's drive of San Francisco, and 20 minutes from swarming Mill Valley, west Marin eschews anything urban, even suburban; it has resisted the voracious development that gobbled up so much of the rest of the county. A proposed eight-lane freeway was stopped in the late 60's and, since 1978, much of west Marin has been zoned to one house per 20 acres.

Nearly all of the coastline is National Seashore. As one resident told me, "it's easier to rob a bank in west Marin than to cut down a tree, and you'll be held less accountable for robbing the bank." This philosophy, a potent blend of affluence and idealism, has been remarkably effective in maintaining thousands of acres of surreal parkland. With its lush, sinuous valleys and grass-swept headlands; its hushed redwood forests and unmarred coastline; its health-food stores and Zen meditation centers, west Marin strikes most visitors as a cross between Lost Horizon and Esalen.

Or Pompeii. Right along the fault line runs west Marin's main artery, a stretch of California's celebrated Highway 1 that jogs past the epicenter of the great 1906 earthquake, which knocked down half of San Francisco. This sometimes spectacularly daunting road hangs off several miles of cliffs before withdrawing inland to wend north past horse farms and sheep ranches through Olema Valley. Also known as the Shoreline Highway, the 20-mile span between hoof-shaped Muir Beach and Tomales Bay is one of this country's loveliest thoroughfares. It leads to three tiny seacoast towns, each with its own tenaciously easygoing culture: Stinson Beach, Bolinas and, a bit farther down another road, Inverness.

Perhaps "lovely" isn't the adjective to describe the vertiginous approach on Highway 1 to Stinson Beach. "Breathtaking" might be more apt. The five or six coastal miles from Muir Beach to Stinson are the closest many visitors will get to skydiving, especially on foggy days, as the road careens along precipice after precipice, the Pacific Ocean roiling against rocks a thousand feet below. A friend once described this drive as like riding the crooked spine of the world. (Timorous souls may elect to follow the Panoramic Highway, Highway 101.)

Stashed between the paws of Mount Tamalpais, Stinson Beach's business district is a casual cluster of restaurants, a few shops, art galleries and a general store that sells, among other necessities, Dom Perignon Champagne and organic Fig Newtons. Orange nasturtiums and violet bougainvillea tangle over weathered walls, fences and mailboxes. Feathery pampas grass waves in the breeze. The beach itself has long been known as a surfing hangout, and from late spring through early autumn, its 4,500 feet of powdery sand attracts swimmers and well-oiled sunbathers as well, although the water will seem wintry to the average Easterner.

CONVERSATION here is like beach conversation everywhere, only more so. During a recent brilliant mid-September afternoon, a middle-aged man with his wet suit peeled to his ample waist sauntered by with a companion, gazing up at the sunlit hills. "Life is stoked, dude," he noted.

Of course it's tempting to poke fun at Marin County's overplayed reputation for self-indulgence, to remark that it's easier to find Evian water in Stinson Beach than Coca-Cola, and that the local thrift store sells leather bikinis. But such comments sound ungracious out here. And on a sunny day in west Marin, encompassed by soaring cliffs, circling hawks, a tawny, undulating countryside, and an ocean that glitters wide-empty, even the irascible visitor feels indulgent.

Still, perhaps the best time to visit Stinson Beach is off-season, when only seagulls strut along the sand, and the town retires its summer role as a North Coast Malibu to return to normal, salt-sprayed somnolence.

Continuing north, Highway 1 passes the Bolinas Lagoon, a green sanctuary where harbor seals splash off tiny Pickleweed Island, while pelicans drift overhead and great blue herons hunt among the reeds. The Audubon Canyon Ranch, which faces the lagoon, owns 1,000 acres of meadowland and forests of redwoods and Douglas fir for its heron and egret rookeries. The ranch is open to visitors on holidays and weekends from March to July, but unfortunately was closed the day I knocked on the gate. My guidebook had described the ranch's birds as "those committed to the sane perpetuation of themselves and the next generation," and I was interested in meeting a few sane perpetuators.

Another perpetuation of sorts awaited me across the lagoon when I arrived in Bolinas -- which is, by the way, no minor feat. Marinites yawn at this story, but it fascinates the out-of-towner: Each time the state erects a road sign announcing Bolinas, with a pointing arrow, someone tears the sign down and throws it into the lagoon. Residents are unapologetic about discouraging visitors to their raffish, unorthodox little town, where dogs run free, Styrofoam is verboten, and no one snickers at the word "karma." It's a town cheerfully and self-consciously mired in the Summer of Love, from the rainbow-painted VW Bug parked in front of the post office to the library bulletin board, which advertises the First Intergalactic Hemp Renaissance Teach-In. No wonder they don't want visitors. However, take the first left past the lagoon onto Bolinas-Olema Road, an avenue of looming eucalyptus trees, then turn onto Wharf Road, and you're there.

But, as Gertrude Stein might have asked, is there any there there? Tucked away amid bougainvillea and wild roses in an overgrown cove by the sea, this former logging town has become aggressively laid back. Shoelaces will make you seem overdressed. Commercially, the town offers a shop or two -- most notably the Kaleidoscope Collective, where you can purchase ceramic female deities and frankincense -- a natural food store, a couple of nonchalant cafes and Smiley's Schooner Saloon, a humble-looking bar with a slightly sinister reputation. As those disappearing road signs indicate, there's a lawless edge to Bolinas. If Jesse James were still alive, he might hide out here and take yoga classes between holdups. Even the town's real-estate people don't want anyone to publicize it. As a friend from Mill Valley remarked, "the whole purpose of living in Bolinas is to live somewhere that nobody knows about."

Bolinas is indeed an idyllic-looking place, with gardens of sunflowers, hidden beaches and twisting, leaf-shadowed roads. If you hike up the Palomarin Trail to the Mesa, where the aristocracy resides, the view of ocean and distant cliffs will make your heart flex. In the evening the tulle fog billows in, as mystical a sight as a glimpse of Avalon. Robinson Jeffers, California's coastline poet, could have been describing this twilight prospect when he wrote of "headland beyond stormy headland plunging like dolphins through the blue sea-smoke."

Up on the Bolinas Mesa, "there" does seem a tenuous concept . The architecture is predictably alternative, best classified as Victorian idiosyncratic: cottages with redwood shingles and adobe additions half drowned in vines. A dog sleeps in the middle of the road. A Mercedes skims past, just missing the dog; its bumper sticker reads: "Recycle Yourself." Below gleams a crescent of white beach, where a beetle-sized kayaker prepares to paddle into azure water. Bolinas wouldn't be a bad place to live for a weekend or a decade, if there wasn't the danger of losing track of which was which.

Back on Highway 1 heading north, Marin's dreaminess intensifies. For the next 10 miles, the road winds through a pastoral landscape that might have been painted by Bruegel after he'd spent the day sunning in a deck chair with a bottle of Chardonnay. Here the rucked-up coastal miles smooth out, fringed by Scotch broom and squat, fragrant bay trees, with a few shadowy pockets of eucalyptus. In the spring these hills are rampant with wildflowers -- poppies, lupins, blue hound's-tongue. In the summer they're tawny; in the winter, bright green. Marin was once the most productive dairy county in California, and the hillsides are dotted with ungulates moodily switching their tails, pensive as church wardens.

By now you feel convinced that you're not actually going anywhere, but only sinking more deeply into the countryside. And in a way, that's true. Highway 1 slips through the mirage-like village of Olema, where the Olema Inn, an elegant 19th-century hotel, sits on the edge of a cow pasture. Follow a dogleg onto Sir Francis Drake Highway, and another few miles brings you onto the Point Reyes Peninsula, to Tomales Bay, and to the tidy, becalmed bohemia of Inverness.

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Inverness has long been a resort town for wealthy San Franciscans, who first hurried here after the big quake, believing that out in the country they were on terra firma. They built rambling redwood summer cottages on the steep ridge overlooking the bay; a few optimists built summer houses on wharfs, including a cottage decorated with onion domes like a minute Kremlin. When the earth twitched 88 years ago, the ground under Inverness didn't crack open, but a few miles away a cow named Matilda tumbled into a fissure.

Yet earthquakes, like traffic jams and crowded department stores, seem far away from Inverness, a town so deeply quiet that you can almost hear the fog burn off around noontime. Not long ago, I went to a wedding high on Inverness ridge, where cedar trees cast long shadows across the baskets of sunflowers and the wind fluttered the bride's lace dress. Down below glimmered the bay, blue as chicory against the blonde hills of its eastern edge. In the middle of the ceremony, a mourning dove began to call from a dark branch, and aside from the murmuring of lovers' vows, there seemed not another sound in the world.

If Inverness feels like a bit of an afterthought compared with Stinson Beach and Bolinas, perhaps that is its greatest charm. Embraced by the 80,000 acres of Point Reyes National Seashore and Tomales Bay State Park, this misty town with its scatter of restaurants and inns has become a sort of romantic preserve, where couples come to disappear, emerging to eat oysters and wander along secluded Heart's Desire Beach, before they disappear again. Occasionally they can be spotted dining on hazelnuts, raspberries and wild boar sausage at Manka's, a former hunting lodge turned fairytale tavern.

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well if one has not dined well," said Virginia Woolf, quoted on Manka's dining room wall. Woolf would have admired the romantic pluck it takes to pay so much attention to sleeping and dining when at any moment, the earth might rock. And yet, no one could call Inverness short-sighted; almost anywhere you go, you'll meet a long view. Drive west onto Mount Vision Road to gaze over hills like a herd of camel humps. Keep driving to Point Reyes Lighthouse, which clings to a jawbone of rock, white as a tooth against the dark sea.

Before sailing back to England, one of Sir Francis Drake's crew described west Marin as "a goodly country . . . stored with many blessings." One of its many blessings must be the wide vistas this goodly place offers, despite the fog. Whenever the fog lifts, what's left behind is a dazzling clarity, an untouched expanse of sea, hills and forests, and the suspicion that it doesn't matter where you've been, or where you're going; for now at least, you're here. LOGISTICS FOR A TRIP Where to Eat

The Pelican Inn, 10 Pacific Way, Muir Beach, Calif. 94965, (415) 383-6000, is just 20 minutes from the Golden Gate Bridge on Highway 1, but feels as if it's 5,000 miles away in Shropshire. A faithful copy of a Tudor tavern down to the big brick Inglenook, the Pelican almost always has a fire burning. Lunch ranges from bangers and mash and cottage pie to a vegetarian salad and costs around $20 for two with a pint of ale apiece. The Pelican also serves dinner (entrees $11.95 to $19.50), and offers seven bedrooms, each with canopy bed, decanter of sherry and bath. Rooms, with a full English breakfast, are $140 to $150. Restaurant closed Monday.

Parkside Cafe, 39 Arenal Avenue, Stinson Beach, Calif. 94970, (415) 868-1272, offers full breakfast, lunch and dinner menus. Built alongside a creek that winds past the beach, the Parkside attracts everyone from surfers and park rangers to vacationing stockbrokers. Dinners are nicely eclectic, with a Provencal accent, and cost about $60 for two.

The Shop, 46 Wharf Road, Bolinas, Calif. 94924, (415) 868-9984, looks like someone's comfortable, book-strewn living room with lots of tables in it. Peruse "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" while lunching on local rock cod fish and chips, "nature burgers" or tostadas. Lunch comes to around $16 for two.

The Olema Inn, 10000 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, Olema, Calif. 94950, (415) 663-9559, is both a bed and breakfast and a lovely, discreet place to stop for lunch or dinner. Built in 1876, the inn overlooks a sweep of pastureland. Dinner for two, with wine, runs to about $75. Upstairs, there are six, antique-filled bedrooms, with private baths and Continental breakfast, for $95 to $105 on summer weekends. Where to Stay

Coastal Marin is peppered with elegant inns and bed and breakfasts. Here are a few other suggestions:

Seadrift Vacation Rentals, 2 Dipsea Road (Post Office Box 177), Stinson Beach, Calif. 94970, (415) 868-1791, offers luxury houses to rent for a weekend, or a week or more. The houses are clustered around private Seadrift Lagoon and run from $330 to $900 for a weekend, $720 to $2,500 weekly.

Stinson Beach Motel, 3416 Highway 1 (Post Office Box 64), Stinson Beach, Calif. 94970, (415) 868-1712, is at the other end of the scale, but one block from the beach, and offers five simple, clean, comfortable rooms, and one apartment with kitchenette. The rooms are $50; apartments $65 for one or two and $10 apiece for one or two additional people.

Grand Hotel, 15 Brighton Avenue, Bolinas, Calif. 94924, (415) 868-1757, has interpreted the word "hotel" loosely -- two rooms above a wildly cluttered consignment shop. They share a bath and kitchen privileges and cost $44 for one or two people, with each additional night costing $33, or $167 for a week.

Smiley's Schooner Saloon and Hotel, 41 Wharf Road, Bolinas, Calif. 94924, (415) 868-1319, bills itself as "The Oldest Continuously Operating Saloon in California," and, for the venturesome, it offers five rooms in a building behind the boisterous saloon, each with bath, from $55 to $85.

Golden Hinde Inn and Marina, 12938 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard (Post Office Box 295), Inverness, Calif. 94937, (415) 669-1389x, is your basic motel, except that it sits right on Tomales Bay and has its own marina. The rooms are spacious, run $69 to $95.

Manka's Inverness Lodge and Restaurant, corner Argylle and Callendar Way (Post Office Box 1110), Inverness, Calif. 94937, (415) 669-1034, is a woodsy old lodge overlooking Tomales Bay. While game is the house specialty, Manka's also serves seafood and vegetarian entrees. With wine, dinner for two will cost $75 to $100.

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A version of this article appears in print on February 27, 1994, on Page 5005015 of the National edition with the headline: Marin's Mellow Coastal Towns. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe